


Taking Shape

by Nevanna



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:17:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1219129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there's one thing that Raven understands, it's change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking Shape

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on 1/6/14, in response to the "out with the old, in with the new" challenge on the LiveJournal community **comicdrabbles**. It incorporates canon from both XMFC and the original movie trilogy. Most importantly, it was a birthday gift for my longtime fandom friend Ronch (aka Sandoz)!  <3

**1.**

The forest is dark and quiet, and every step takes Raven further from the house that she can never enter again. 

She wishes that she could grow wings and fly above the treetops, or change into a wild animal that lives off whatever it can find here in the woods. She's tried, and the only shapes she can take are human ones. It'll have to be enough.

Soon, she’ll need something to eat, a place to sleep undisturbed, and a new face, one that looks like someone's lost child or trusted parent, or anything but herself.

**2.**

Raven woke up this morning in a soft bed, in a house like a story-book castle. "Is your mother really going to let me stay here?" she asks the boy who found her. 

"Of course she will," Charles says. "She thinks that you're family."

She remembers his voice in her head the night that they met. "You can do that? Make people think things that aren't true?"

Charles glances downward. "I only do it when I really have to." He touches her hand, and she lets him. "And it _can_ be true, Raven, if you want."

**3.**

Raven explores the city while Charles is in classes or at the library, and eventually finds a job at a pub that's filled with students on weekend nights. She tells him that she wants to help out with the rent, and adds, "You've always taken care of me."

"And you know that I always will," he replies.

Raven wishes that she could be as certain of that as he is, but if there's one thing that she understands, it's change.

**4.**

She took a seat in the back row five minutes before the guest lecturer wheeled himself into the room. She doesn’t smile when she recognizes phrases from the thesis that he once read aloud to her (smelling like soap and tea and wool and _home_ ), thinking instead of the dangling corpses that could have been her, or Angel, or Azazel, or Hank...

As the students file out of the lecture hall, she hears the name that's no longer quite hers. _**Raven, please give Erik my regards**_ , Charles says into her mind. _**There will always be a place for you with us, if you choose.**_

She pauses by the door, wondering how many more lines she’ll have to cross before she's no longer welcome, how long it will be before she doesn’t care. "It's _Mystique_ ," she says, perhaps to herself.

**5.**

Charles Xavier has lived to preach another day, and Mystique doesn't want to know whether he's figured out what she tried to do to him… or _for_ him. There's another battle to fight, and it’s hers alone. 

She's spent enough time in their human enemy’s company to disguise herself without raising suspicions. Her _true_ brothers in arms are dead, imprisoned, or scattered, but she has survived this long, and she will do whatever it takes to make sure that, one day, there will be no more need for disguises. 


End file.
